NONNE 11: A NEW CREATIVE HOME

NONNE 11

Finding a new studio, a new creative home.
Written in English.

 It’s May, and Bamberg has risen from hibernation. Branches are suddenly clad in luminous green; red-tipped brambles and roses are competing for space on the riverbank, racing towards bloom in an explosion of life and energy. Crowds are thronging their way through the market stalls, small beer-drinking groups scattered along benches and railings just people-watching.

 The obligation to wear masks outdoors in the city centre has been lifted a few days ago, and our faces feel strangely naked and unprotected from sunlight. Over these few months, un-masking one’s face has become an intimate act somehow, a revealing of a slither of self that was hidden before. I won’t miss the wearing of masks, but I might miss that strange thrill of seeing the lower half of someone’s face for the first time, making a half image whole, often in surprising ways.

 My twenty minute walk to the new studio is lit by the chestnuts’ generous cream-coloured candelabras. As my new surrounding crystallise into familiar paths and structures, I can feel myself easing into this space. After months of renovating, building things and managing temporary situations, with an excess of uncertainty about life in general, I am slowly beginning to feel more grounded. With that, there is a sense of inner opening, a tightness released in my chest, with a gushing stream of creative ideas pouring out.

It’s impossible the capture the canopied ball-room feeling of standing under a flowering chestnut tree, all perfect and new in spring, untarnished by the spotty brown deadness of chestnut blight that will appear later in summer.

Alvaro embarking some ceiling painting wearing the most amazingly horrible orange t-shirt imaginable, the type of clothing appropriate for this kind of messiness.

Sugar candy houses on my way to the studio. Here, the magnolia in all its stateliness is still in flower; now towards the end of May it’s long wilted and greened.

 Once again – because realisations return in a cyclical way - it is just so clear to me how stress is an absolute killer for creative output. And another thing: Home is where I can express my true self safely and creatively.

 Whether this refers to a physical space, a corner in my apartment, a relationship, or a larger geographical area: Home is where I feel unguarded enough to unlock those inner sluices of creativity. Then, I can use that energy to sustain myself, to manage stress in a healthy way, to have each breath reach deeper filling up my entire lung capacity, and ultimately, to flourish as a human being.

 With this new studio in Bamberg, a new home is born. It is by far the most spacious, light-filled and personally meaningful studio I’ve ever had, mostly because I have been able to co-create this one from scratch.

 The studio space, nicknamed NONNE 11, will officially open its doors on the 18th of June, ready to embrace summer in its full force. To celebrate this significant step with us, have a look at my calendar for dates, the location and Covid-19 details.

 While my path has been windy and unforeseeable up to this point, I certainly think there was a direction to it; it’s as if I am following a scent trail, invisible but clearly intuitable. Opening my own studio-gallery – and in such a stunning location - is a truly important mile stone on that windy path, and while I don’t know what the future holds, when we can travel and trust strangers again, how long this moment will last and how exactly we will make this project work, this is the right place to be now. This is where I will plant my feet, create, build, connect, love, be present and bring my energy to now. Over time, I am sure the studio will take on a life of its own - you can follow our stories and events here.

This will be a space that allows me to continually stay curious, to keep exploring, to blur the boundaries of my different modes of making and to become a nexus of connectivity for other creative souls. I want this space to feel interesting, inspiring and safe to those who visit us. A space where my partner and I can live out or contribution to the world, where we can hand-craft unique pieces that will add value and meaning to people’s lives. A space to practise emotional articulation through art, both to improve my own being in the world and to touch the lives of others.

Just around the corner from the studio, next to the Regnitz river, there’s a perfect picnic spot for spring lunches.

Rivers and canals mark this area of Bamberg, and our studio is built on an island inside an island. The canal sides are worn and picturesque and make me want to lie down on the lychen-covered stones.

A favourite lunch spot opposite a steep set of stairs leading up the hill. There’s a ferry, which seems to operate occasionally although I’m not aware of any discernible schedule.

Our workbench, massive and heavy, the most difficult piece of furniture to move by far. This will house a parade of power tools when everything is installed.

The studio: A space of possibilities, to be filled with ideas, events and droplets of everyday living.

Amphibian Living

Amphibian Living

Thoughts on Munich Jewellery Week, jewellery in a digital world, and translations between spheres.

Written in English.

These past few weeks, I have been very preoccupied by thoughts about art jewellery in a digital future. How can tangible objects, made of “real” materials in the “real” world and defined by their relationship to the body, be translated into a virtual sphere? Can we have virtual bodies? And can jewellery exist on our screens and in our imaginations only?

I have no answer; these questions crowd my brain as I try to fall asleep at night, making me wonder about the future of my art and craftsmanship in a world that has been catapulted into digitalization by Covid. In Germany alone, some companies have leapt ahead five years in a only couple of months, others still send faxes and prefer to be paid in cash. This is no judgement, just a statement. Even looking at my own group of friends, colleagues and clients: Some are talking about NFTs, others refuse to utilize the internet. I believe that there is power in being fluent in the analogue as well as the digital sphere, a sort of amphibian in a changing world.  It’s truly exciting to be alive in such times, feeling the shift beneath my feet.

To me, it’s also exciting to be faced with such an unknowable future – really, the only thing we can say for sure is that the future will be utterly, unimaginably different from our pasts. I don’t think we even understand how different life will be thirty years from now.

 Meanwhile, Munich Jewellery Week has come and gone, the event obviously having been cancelled due to our current Covid-19 restrictions. Some institutions, groups and individuals have attempted to take the event online, hosting discussions, virtual exhibitions and talks, and distributing print magazines, most notably Current Obsession with their compendium of jewellery-related articles and editorials in this year’s Munich Jewellery Week 2021 edition.

 But I have to admit: Personally, I feel a huge Munich-Jewellery-Week-shaped hole in the universe. There is something missing. What about all the energy? The field of art jewellery heavily relies on tactility, and it is incredibly difficult to fully appreciate these complex, three-dimensional art pieces on a flat screen or page - these pieces that often surprise us with a unique texture, an unexpected juxtaposition of materials that we simply can’t “get” without seeing (and sometimes touching) the real thing. More than that, these art pieces are exquisite little storytelling worlds that exude their own energy field, a mysterious force you can only feel when face to face with the piece.

 I like to think that it’s not only the energy of the materiality that we feel, but the fact that it was hand made by a human being. You can detect the invisible human traces on it, the indistinct web of criss-crossing micro-movements of a highly skilled artist. It reflects the imprint of this particular artist’s visual language. Compare this to the image framed by your laptop’s silver screen (or perhaps even spiderwebbed by your broken smartphone display). While a jewellery piece is arresting and intriguing on the screen, it is not fully comprehensible in the same way.

So how can we, I wonder, learn to speak these two languages with the same fluency? How can we translate the tangible 3D into the digital? Should we even? How can makers use digital possibilities to amplify their stories, and analogue techniques to create an imprint of their being that will touch us emotionally on a level that digital art cannot? I do think we are moving into a world where neither one of these realms of being can do without the other. How can we become amphibians in this sense?

My POMEGRANATE FANTASY brooch in an imaginary orchard created by illustrator Benjamin Langford, featuring jewellery by Vika Tonu, Birgit Wimmer, Suyu Chen, Marina Voronina, Barbora Lexová, Anne Irving and Emma Rose Bennett, Geesche Arning, H2ERG, Arielle Brackett, Linsey Fontijn, Mercedes Palmer-Higgins, Dawoon Jeong, Cecilia Kesman, Idil Laslo, Mariangela Jewellery London, Zsófia Neuzer, Mayumi Okuyama, Dorothea Schippel, and Larissa Thiel.